2006-06-30

Having finally learned how to email myself photos from my cell phone, I now present Boxing Day at South Edmonton Common:Above are two photos of the lineup at Best Buy. This was at about 8am...it opened at 6am to apparently even larger crowds.

Finally, here's a photo of a prepaid music card at Wal-Mart. I took this picture because at first glance I thought it said "Gay it with music!"

As promised earlier, here's the start of updated roster moves on the team. The Yahoo Public teams I leave fairly constant, so there won't be many ch-ch-ch-changes... those that are changes are highlighted in red.

2006-06-29

CloseMaleFriend: So what happened to you tonight?FeynmanAndCoultersLoveChild: Well, that girl who I've been hanging around with turns out to be a stripper.CloseMaleFriend: Holy crap. So what happened? FeynmanAndCoultersLoveChild: Well, she told me that she was a "proud bisexual", that she thought I was hot, and that she would be willing to perform any kinky sex act known to mankind if I was so willing.CloseMaleFriend: And on the eve of our big bachelor party, wow... FeynmanAndCoultersLoveChild: Wait, there's more. She's more than willing to do all sorts of things with me and 1/2/3/15 other girls. In fact, she's friends with several strippers and will gladly bring them to me.CloseMaleFriend: F*ing paradise man! F*ing paradise... FeynmanAndCoultersLoveChild: So naturally I said no.CloseMaleFriend: WHAT??? FeynmanAndCoultersLoveChild: I turned it down. A stripper actually approached me with the full desire to do all sorts of amazing sex acts with me that men pay money to have simulated in front of them, and I said "not interested"CloseMaleFriend: You sure you're not gay. FeynmanAndCoultersLoveChild: No, I just hate women. But there would have been a catch to it. There always is. Remember the Bundy Curse.

Since the hockey season ended, I've been watching between one and three baseball games a day. Yet I still haven't had the energy to get into any of my fantasy teams, not the 4 Yahoo ones nor the five MLB.com salary cap leagues nor the MLB.com Hit Streak League.

Today I thought I'd do a quick rundown of how the teams are doing. Here and here are the draft day rosters of each team...maybe later in the week I'll get around to posting the current rosters. An early May pool update was given here...needless to say, I've gone downhill a little from that week where I was 2nd place.

Alberta Mariners (neé GoOilers?), Yahoo Public Head-to-Head: 11th/12, 30 games back, 46-71-3 record, 4-6-0 last week, 2-8-0 curently this week. Dmitri Young and my non-Ontario pitching tandem of Eric Gagne and Rich Harden are both on the disabled list.Edmonton Separatists, Yahoo Public Head-to-Head: 4th/12, 19 games back, 60-50-10 record, 3-7-0 last week, 4-4-2 currently this week. Only Dustin Hermanson is on the DL.Only Belarus Can Stop Me (neé FucktheEtownPolice, neé Rocket Man, neé BetterThan(insert team member name here)?, neé BetterThan(insert other team member name here)), Yahoo Private Head-to-Head: 6th/6, 22 games back, 61-79-4 record, 6-6-0 last week, 5-6-1 currently this week. With Derek Lee back in the lineup, only Cliff Floyd and Keith Foulke are on the DL this week.Royal Alberta Navy, Yahoo Public Rotisserie: 11th/12, 41.5 points, +1.5 points today, 11.5 points out of 10th place. Ironically my healthiest team, nobody is injured.

In the end, I ranked 20% in my English Premiership Salary Cap "Football" (Soccer) fantasy team. I have no idea if that's good or bad. Literally no idea. I also don't know what any of the positions in soccer mean or what 99% of the stats mean. So that wasn't too bad, I suppose.

You can take 6 hours and 49 minutes flying to Seattle and then into Edmonton.

Or you can take 10 or 11 hours and fly to Seattle and then Salt Lake City, or Anchorage to Salt Lake and then into Edmonton. This seams perhaps a little odd, partly because Edmonton is 1419km north of Salt Lake and Salt Lake is 3383km south of Anchorage.

So Anchorage-Salt Lake-Edmonton is 4802 kilometres to travel less than half that.

Meanwhile Anchorage-Seattle-Edmonton is 3181 kilometres travel distance, and Anchorage-Seattle-Salt Lake City-Edmonton is 4821 kilometres. And remember that you end up going horrifically south only to fly back north again!

Again, to call attention to the title of this thread, Edmonton prides itself as "Gateway to the North". Isn't it slightly realistic to think that say a person in Chicago wishing to go to to Alaska might just stop off in Edmonton along the way? (Of course, Edmonton to Chicago goes through Denver....)

Okay, so today at work heard a juicy Pronger rumour.. and then the Battle of Alberta posts its own. Feel free to add your own:

Chris Pronger and Ryan Smyth hate each other, and Pronger said either Smyth goes or he does. The Oilers told him that the face of the team for the last decade [and how well has that team he's been the face of done pre-Pronger anyways? -ed] wasn't going anywhere, so Pronger said it had to be him

Chris Pronger has been having an affair with a hot young little number from Sherwood Park [quite the commute for poor Chris, who's been living in Terwilliger -ed] and his wife found out about it, and demanded a move away from her to reclaim her husband...preferably to a city where one of the 10-best NHLers isn't recognized by 90% of the populace the moment he steps off of the stoop, and where nobody knows what the hell a "puck bunny" is

Same rumour as the one above, except that Sherwood Park girl is pregnant...and she's just from the Greater Edmonton Area, not SP specifically

The "family problems" is all just cover, and Pronger was encouraged by top NHL brass to take the Edmonton deal and then demand to leave to a nice big television market, receiving some juicy under the table money to make sure that Edmonton was in no danger of possessing top NHL talent

Update, July 1 2006 11:19am: Chris Pronger is not only having an affair, and not only got her pregnant, but the someone is Citytv's weathergirl/sportsbeat reporter Christie Chorley, who has been seen making out with Pronger in the past at Dantes. Both her and Citytv have adamently denied the rumours being true. In other words, she's gotten an abortion and there's no more proof. July 20 2006 update: A-Channel recently sent Ms. Chorley and all of their news staff packing

Update, July 1 2006 11:19am: Same story and Pronger/Smyth above, only this is Pronger and coach Craig MacTavish who don't get along and one or the other had to go. If this is true, ironically in April fans would have overwhelmingly told the coach to take a hike.

Update, July 20 2006 1:47pm: A new rumour, this one that Steve Staois had slept with Mrs. Pronger...in retaliation for Chris sleeping with the gorgeous blonde whom is Mrs. Staois.

Update, December 7 2006 12:44pm: I see a post in the comments that claims Pronger slept with somebody from Breakfast Television (Bridget Ryan? Ick!)

2006-06-26

Trying desperately not to think of Chris Pronger, my buddy and I went to the Edmonton Cracker Cats game at Telus Field yesterday. We ended up talking about the loss of the Edmonton Trappers...and of course then onto Pronger again anyways.

Regardless, Telus Field is a beautiful ballpark...built back in the Trappers days [of course, "those days" ended just a mere two years ago -ed]. A remarkably deep field too: 420 feet to the back wall (and a real green monster of a wall out there), 340 to the left field wall, and 320 back behind first base. While there we started to ponder how it compared to other major league parks. Well, here we go:

So in other words, only Minute Maid Park's monsterous 436 feet centrefield (some sources claim only 435) is longer than Telus Field's 420 (cough cough), and Coors Field matches Telus's dimensions fairly well (347/415/350-340/420/320) except for the right corner. But Minute Maid doesn't have the giant wall in the middle of centre field that Telus does, and Edmonton's elevation of 668 metres doesn't compare to Denver at 1,609. Telus Field doens't have a Park Factor published anywhere I could Google, but I suppose somebody with more time and energy than me could compute the Park Factor based on the Trappers win/loss record.

2006-06-23

a dually diesel pullin hard with a horse trailer in towmontana side of sweet grass and i'm headed hometrophy buckles and whiskey bottles and a worn out saddle hornbareback riders and teamropers, huskin taber cornthe roads get better every time i cross north of forty ninewell i tip my hat and it's good to be back across the medicine line

hurtin albertan with nothing more to losetoo much oil money, not enough boozeeast of the rockies and west of the restdo my best to do my damnedest and that’s just about all I guess

them windy b.c. mountain passes finally flatten outhairpin turns and pst got my heart up in my throatit’s hairy haulin horses up across the great divideand them wild chilcotin buckaroos, they sure know how to ridethe roads get better every time i cross that british columbia linei tip my hat and it's good to back across the kickin horse line

well saskabush is pretty, yup she's pretty flatand lord knows i'm a prairie boy so I’m pretty used to thatbut farmers facin off with gophers, man it ain’t the sameas bein home at the saddledome for the oilers at the flamesthe roads get better every time i cross that saskatchewan linei tip my hat and it's good to be back on mountain standard time

2006-06-20

Tonight I loudly proclaimed walking down anti-climatic Whyte Avenue that "its a shame, we used to live in a free country". "It's still a free country" some anonymous EPS shithead claimed, having just physically shoved me and told me to walk on the other side of a parked vehicle. "Yeah, a f#%%ing cop telling me where to walk, sure sounds like a free country" I shouted back.

What I should have said goes a little more like this (this is the monologue I wrote as I walked away, so its not like I came up with it hours later):

So you think I live in a free country do you? That's a nice gun you have there. Where can I buy one of those? What, you mean I can't buy one because the government doesn't let me? I thought I lived in a free country?

Of course, if this was a free country there wouldn't be a man with a gun bossing me around, confident that I cannot have a gun. For if this was a free country, I too would have a gun, and if somebody with as little intelligence and class as you've demonstrated tried to tell me that I had to walk in a certain way or else, I would proceed to shoot them. It is that exact reason, the ability to exercise political freedom at the hands of a government agent, that a much wiser and civilized society which once proudly called herself free allowed its citizens to do.

Now, of course, we are most certainly not in a free society, we are in a totalitarian one, where people like you have undeserved levels of control which you justify having based solely on your ability to carry it out. One day you might lose that ability, and I certainly hope you fully appreciate at that precise moment the benefits a free society would have granted you.

2006-06-19

In 2004, a Cinderella team from Alberta went all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals against a team from the southeast U.S. named after a weather phenomenon, but only scored a single goal and came up short in their quest for the cup.

In 2006, a Cinderella team from Alberta went all the way to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals against a team from the southeast U.S. named after a weather phenomenon, but only scored a single goal and came up short in their quest for the cup.

The quests weren't exactly identical: the Oilers came back from a 3-1 series deficit to come within a Pisani hat trick of winning the Cup, while the Flames coughed up a 3-2 series lead.

But the end result is the same. The Stanley Cup is being awarded to the Carolina Hurricanes a I speak...er, type. This is even more painful than having Michelle Jean become Governor General. And I have nothing else to say on the topic of hockey, though the Edmonton Police will be the topic of a later post.

Bonus thought: Yet again, a Finnish netminder has led his team to a second place finish.

Bonus perverse insight: Somewhere in Raleigh hotel rooms tonight, some Oilers wives are going to get some seriously vicious anal sex marathons. If I feel this angry and frustrated, how would Smyth and Pronger feel? (Advantage to this, I know a girl who's had sex with Georges Laraque, and I don't like her, so I hope he reams her rectum beyond human belief in 48 hours or so.)

2006-06-16

The only feelings I could express at the command line were male feelings after all. unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck, more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep -- More proof Linux is sexist!